Sunday, July 26, 2015

As I walk around San Francisco, I often bemoan how soaring land values are transforming this peninsular city. There's construction everywhere and it sure doesn't look as if there will be room for immigrants and workers as it gets done. But there are still an astonishing diversity of people and concerns. Not infrequently, I come home from walking a precinct and rush to the web for answers: what are these residents so stirred up about?

Allow me to share what I learned from my superficial research into that sign. The Paracels look to be off Vietnam, but were taken over definitively by the People's Republic of China in 1974 after a naval battle. Though there's not much to the islands, including no reliable fresh water, the Chinese are developing them as a tourist destination. Meanwhile both Taiwan and Vietnam maintain the Paracels are part of their countries.

The Spratly Islands seem even less likely to be objects of international strife: no people, no arable land, and little water. All that's there would seem to be fish and guano, all that is except the possibility there is undersea oil.

That last presumably explains why six nations claim these isolated reefs: Brunei, the PRC, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. All of them maintain some military presence on the islands and there have been several skirmishes among the claimants since 1946. Most recently, China has been dredging and building an airfield which the other claimants consider evidence of aggressive intent. The U.S. and China engaged in some classic jockeying for position over the region this spring. Presumably the U.S. Navy is being deployed to protect the possibility of U.S. oil operations.

Just as the Quemoy and Matsu crisis was scary background noise for those of us who grew up in the 1950s, the Paracels and Spratlys are simmering hot spots today for those aware of these remote atolls.

UPDATE: Just in case anyone arrives here from Google -- the New York Times has published a detailed explainer and maps about these island.

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What is this blog for?

This San Francisco purveyor of graffiti has it right. When times are bleak -- when country and planet sink under the barely restrained sway of greed, raw power, and fear -- it's time to restate what matters.

I write here to preserve and kindle hope for a national and global turn toward multi-racial, economically egalitarian, gender non-constricting, woman affirming, and peace choosing democracy that preserves the habitability of earth for all. There's a big order -- but what else is there to do but struggle for this? Not much.

Topics range from the minuscule to the transcendent to the global, from dire to delightful. I am not an optimist, but I refuse to allow myself to wallow within the easy bias that everything is going to always be awful. Good also happens; love lives too.

I've been yammering here about activism, politics, history, racism and other occasional horrors and pleasures since 2005. I intend to continue as long as the opportunity exists. In this time, that means activism and chronicling resistance. Perhaps it always has, one way and another.

About Me

I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. Will work for justice.